What frustrates me the most as an entrepreneur

I wonder what life would be like if salaries were publicized in the same way as professional athletes.<p>I've had situations where extremely intelligent and productive fellow employees left the company because they found out someone else of the same level was making a lot more than they were. And by the time they offer a raise, the employee has already emotionally moved onto other pastures.<p>I'll admit that when I found out someone else was making a lot more despite putting in less hours, my motivation within the company dropped dramatically and I put in my notice a few days later. It's not that my only motivation was money but I lost a lot of respect for mgmt.<p>I do think the argument is funny sometimes. I'm not saying that the author believes this, but I've seen other owners come across like, "we're not trying to be greedy... we really don't have much money." Okay, so then why not tell me what everyone is earning and owns so that I know where I fit in? Oh right... you want to get away with the minimal amount you can get paying me.

I'm conflicted about this post. I think your expressions are heartfelt, but it sounds like you've been window shopping when you don't have the funds to buy.<p>If you knew you didn't have the money to fairly pay for this designer's services, why ask? To the more cynical among us, this post may seem like a manipulative way to indirectly guilt-trip this guy into working for you far below his asking rate.<p>Look, you know how to get press and upvotes on HN. You obviously know how to influence people. But maybe now isn't the time to be speaking about this hiring issue while it's still unresolved.

Promises are meaningless in business. This great UX guy shouldn't take your low pay for a second. He's probably a great UX guy because he's focused on UX and not investing. He needs to be paid well or he won't be able to focus on UX 110%<p>Remember, not being an investor if your business doesn't pan out it's much harder on him than a guy who has a portfolio to fall back on.<p>He'll also likely resent you. This resentment can come back to affect his work when crunch-time comes. Employees that want more money, deserve more money, but took low pay on the hope of success tend slowly develop resentment towards the business. Especially the longer they wait for the promised success.

<i>When I talk about shares/options, I am serious. I am not trying to con you to be a low-paid slave. I want to share our prosperity and success with you when the time comes.</i><p>I never take the offer of equity as a con. I see it for what it is: a high-risk investment because the founder does not have enough capital to pay. The main point here is that <i>when the time comes</i> should really be <i>if the time comes</i>.<p>If you are a founder in this situation, realize what you are asking for is a hybrid worker/investor. And you shouldn't be surprised when this narrows the pool of available workers interested in the opportunity.

This is an honourable position to take. Unfortunately, it still leaves you stuck not being able to pay people wages they require for financial stability.

as a founder and an engineer.. you are being naive. You know how many times we hear, "I have a billion dollar idea, all i need is 1% of xxx market". Yes we all hope our startups will be successful, but in the end engineers and designers have to look out for our own best interests, as the odds are stacked against you and more than likely you will fail. While your idea has some social proof ( <a href="http://www.maven.co/knowledge-marketplace" rel="nofollow">http://www.maven.co/knowledge-marketplace</a> , <a href="http://www.liveperson.com/experts" rel="nofollow">http://www.liveperson.com/experts</a> ) , its very hard to convince people your idea is good.. especially if its an extremely new idea, and second hard to hire the best at lower than market value, especially if you are a first time founder with no experience raising funding ( the TC article does you no help either).<p>You should see if he would be willing to contract with you, while allowing him to work another job and possibly give him equity incentives along with pay.

It's the nature of the beast, you're a startup ... you can't pay people what they would make on the open market ... People who wind up working for you, either believe in you and/or your idea.<p>So embrace that constraint.<p>I'm kind of surprised that you're looking for a UX guy full time, Is that really necessary in your estimation? Don't you think you'd do better with a freelancer billing out hourly?

<i>When I talk about shares/options, I am serious. I am not trying to con you to be a low-paid slave. I want to share our prosperity and success with you when the time comes.</i><p>Does this mean employees get stock options, or are they promised to get stock options?

What frustrates me the most about your blog is the fact that when I want to know what the heck Minutebox is, the link doesn't really work.

UX wise, I don't want to click through a random bunch of faces to solve my problem.<p>You will have tonnes of "experts" who buy in. There's always a supply of people who want money.<p>You could provide a way I can type "how do I do X", and any experts interested can give a free 30 second answer. You might want to get credit details first (to keep time-wasters away).

My idea involves having some capital to work with, but I'd still like to hear some feedback. When hiring people, you tell them up from "we're willing to pay you up to $AMOUNT in cash and/or stock as annual compensation. What percentage of that would do you want as salary with the remainder as stock?"

I think the right thing to do here is to realise that they are outside your current means. Either pick them up for some contract work at the market rate or if they do really believe in the idea maybe they should be a cofounder.

<i>If you are an investor, and you think I should pay people peanuts to maximize your investment. Please go away. I disrespect you.</i><p>Shouldn't that be "You disrespect me"?

OP: You're one of the good ones, as far as I can tell. Please stay in the game.<p>The real issue, I think, is that your job forces you to motivate people to take risks on your behalf and it feels like you're over-promising. A lot of success in business relies on motivating people (employees, clients, users) to help you succeed by promising what you'll be able to deliver if everything goes right... selling a vision, in other words. But your workers buy into that vision: they're willing to take mediocre (or even abysmal) compensation in return for the opportunity to be part of something great.<p>You shouldn't feel bad about paying them poorly. If they wanted high-paying jobs, they'd take them. You should feel bad if you downgrade or abuse their loyalty, if you intentionally break your implicit promises to them (if you bust your ass and do the right thing and still fail, that's <i>not</i> an intentional breach). But you seem considerate enough that I don't see you doing that.<p>As for investors and the low salaries they expect employees to take, that's a gnarly issue. It's a completely fucked system when the people who are risking more (their careers and opportunity cost) and putting more on the line (their time and work) are second-class citizens compared to the investors, who are just putting up money (that might not even be theirs, in the case of institutional agents). The <i>real</i> investors in any company are the founders and early employees who are doing the actual work. The money given by financial investors ought to be respected (it's a loan, not a gift) and they should certainly have enough say to ensure this, but it shouldn't give them the clout it does.<p>It's one of those decrepit old systems whereby favor has more value than labor. It's not worth taking personally, and your employees don't resent you for being on the losing end of it.<p>Also, as for what keeps that system in place, I think there's a bit of unacknowledged resentment of entrepreneurs by VCs. The VCs have the well-paid, cushy, powerful and easy jobs and are pretty much guaranteed by their path-of-low-resistance career track to be rich... but their jobs are a bit boring from a day-to-day perspective... lots of meetings and reviewing prospectuses (prospectii?) and shit like that. The entrepreneurs, as they see it, deserve less respect because they have the <i>fun</i> jobs.

First, if you can't afford an UX guy, even just paying him something fair, then why even hire one? Work with him as contractor first but for a fix rate rate. That way he doesn't have to leave his paying job and gets to work with the team. Nights or weekends whatever works for him.<p>Second, again you probably don't need an UX guy now. Dig into your heart, whats not working for Minutebox? User adoption or just the plain old people are just not finding it. If that's is the problem, then you won't turn it around by hiring a great UX guy. You only need the UX guy when you get tons of users and you need someone to make the experience of using minutebox better for them.